Chuck Soileau

Name: Charles "Chuck" Soileau

Gender: Male

Age: 18

Grade: 12th

School: Aurora High School

Hobbies and Interests: Politics, history, video games, zombies, comedy, debate club, school newspaper

Appearance: Chuck is short and fairly small for an 18-year old male; at 5'4", he is far from the shortest person in the school, but most of those shorter than him are girls. He weighs 135lb, and while he lacks much noticeable fat, he also lacks much in the way of muscle. Overall, his figure is thin, slight and moderately wiry; a sharp contrast to the slightly-chubby appearance he had for most of his life up until the mid-teens. One thing that does stand out is that he has slightly large feet for his size. While not exactly “oversized”, his feet still look too large for his small shape and stature, something he’s quite self-conscious about.

His small frame aside, Chuck does not particularly stand out in a crowd. He is never described or thought of as ugly, but he’s never described as particularly handsome or attractive either. The only appearance-related compliments he ever gets are descriptions of him being “cute”; a perception that is no doubt helped by his small size. Chuck has a rather short, round face of mostly average proportions, however the main exception to this also being his most distinctive facial feature; his thin, relatively flat nose. He also has a prominent gap tooth that shows whenever he opens his mouth, particularly when he grins. When bored or in deep thought, he can frequently be found placing his fingernail or a pen lid between the gap; something that he has been told by his parents to stop doing as it might be making the gap bigger.

He is normally clean-shaven, but on the day of abduction, was in the process of growing a beard to see how it’d look. However, it was only at the stage of some patchy rough stubble when he was kidnapped, having not shaven for only a few days. He has dirty blonde hair that is cut just short enough to not get in his eyes. He has brown eyes and, being short-sighted, always carries a pair of thin black-rimmed glasses with him.

On the day of the abduction, he was wearing jeans, a blue hooded sweatshirt, and a brown Team Fortress 2 t-shirt with a picture of the Soldier rocket-jumping on the front. He was also carrying a white beanie with the face of a Boo, the ghost from Mario, on the front, and two white Boo-like “arms” on the side.

Biography: Chuck's parents were both born and raised in Marksville, Louisiana; both were of Cajun heritage and came from relatively poor (yet not impoverished) backgrounds. His father, Philip Soileau, was the sixth of eight children and the son of the owners of a local hotel, and at the time of Chuck's birth had just finished training to serve as an officer in the Avoyelles Parish Sheriff's Office. His mother, Sally Richards, was from a smaller and slightly better off family than Philip's; her parents worked as farmers in the surrounding countryside. At the time of Chuck's birth, she was working as a teaching assistant in the local high school. The two had met during their late-teens at school, marrying by their early 20s. They had four children overall, Chuck being their second child. Their other children are called Louise (currently 19), Annabel (currently 15) and Adam (currently 12).

Chuck's upbringing was, as a whole, pretty ordinary for a child growing up in rural Louisiana. Like most children, he was not immune to having strange childhood fears (for example, up until he was six, he had a strong fear of any planes flying overhead, something his relatives would either find adorable or hilarious) and the like, but his social, physical and intellectual development was decidedly average; reassuring for his parents as Louise had initially struggled developmentally, taking a long time to learn to talk and read.

At the age of 9, Chuck's paternal grandmother, Mary Soileau, suddenly passed away due to a complication during a kidney operation. This struck Chuck hard. It was his first "real" encounter with death. He was close to his grandmother and saw her on an almost weekly basis, so it was very upsetting for him to lose her. Unable to carry on running the hotel and maintaining the fairly large rural home they'd both shared, Chuck's grandfather Billy decided to move to Mercer Island, in Washington, where he had spent much of his youth before settling down back in Louisiana; Louisiana held too many painful memories for him and Washington was the closest thing he had to a second home. To help take care of and stay close to him, Chuck's parents decided to move to Seattle, using some of the money Mary had left behind to help pay for their new apartment. Chuck's mother was seeking a new job anyway, and his parents both wanted to send their children to a better high school (the local one was notoriously underfunded), so they decided that this was as good an opportunity as they'd get to move to a locale with better schools and more job opportunities.

Shortly after moving to Seattle, Philip became an officer in the Seattle Police Department (currently, he has reached the rank of Sergeant), and Sally, after a brief stint working at a day-care facility in a hospital, started her own day-care nursery with a friend. Due to the jobs of his parents, he has picked up very basic information on how to respond to an emergency; for example, while not an expert, he has slightly more first aid knowledge than the average untrained teenager. The move to Seattle (a completely new environment for Chuck, who previously had never travelled further than Beaumont, Texas) was initially very distressing and rather unsettling for Chuck, but he settled in rather quickly, making several friends at his new school. However, despite all this, Chuck had problems with bullying; his distinctive Cajun accent and his short height all provided fodder for a small number of bullies.

While he couldn’t do anything about his height, he did try and sort out his accent, attempting to fake a Washington accent using the internet and a few of his newly-formed friends as templates. However, the attempts to fake a new accent failed, and only further contributed to the bullying. Today, Chuck’s accent is nowhere near as prominent as it once was; it only really shows when Chuck is emotional or when he’s deliberately putting it on; other than that, it is rarely noticed or noticeable. He also tried to convince his parents to remove his gap tooth (which he had just began to notice around that time, and was worried would become new fodder for bullying), but by the time they had the money and time to get it done, Chuck had grown fond of it. Ever since he was around 15, he has had no real problems with bullying, and while jokes are still made about his height or Cajun heritage, Chuck is now more likely to join in with those jokes than he is to get offended by them.

He was brought up in a devout Catholic household, and while in the past few years he has stopped regularly attending church and has become somewhat less devout, he is still religious. While he has grown more sceptical about some of the Catholic doctrine and the idea of organised religion itself as he has grown older (in part due to Louise and to a lesser extent his father taking these positions whenever family conversation turns to religion), he still believes most principles of Catholicism, praying regularly, and proudly identifies as a Catholic, in large part due to his family's strong Catholic roots. Going to church more often is something Chuck has been promising to himself that he'd do, but putting it off for months; it has been a similar situation with getting a part-time job and doing some charity work.

For the most part, Chuck got on well with his family, and he still does. He shares a lot of interests with his older sister Louise, for example they have similar senses of humour, similar tastes in TV shows and both have an interest in history, frequently helping each other with history homework. The one exception is politics; Louise has no interest in the subject, and thinks of all politicians as without exception corrupt, dishonest individuals who are all the same on the issues of importance, an assessment Chuck strongly disagrees with. He never really bonded with his younger sister Annabel, and the two frequently argue over petty things to this day. He also gets on well with his extended family, and despite having since moved out of Louisiana, still regularly visits them (now he is old enough, he has visited them on his own a couple of times.)

Chuck is known as being a friendly, generous, trusting person. He’ll try and get on with everyone he meets. He rarely swears, the exception being when on the internet (he hasn’t got a problem with typing or writing all but the most offensive of words) and when extremely angry or upset. He has a small circle of "close" friends (including Joe Carrasco and Travis Webster), but is willing to befriend others who are members of different cliques or have different interests. In terms of relationships, Chuck is straight, but has not had a girlfriend.

He has a sense of humour he feels is rather weird; while enjoying “clever” satirical shows, at the same time he can get very giggly over immature forms of humour like toilet humour. He often spends time looking at a variety of comedy clips (from British panel shows to internet sketch shows) on the internet. He once had a reputation as a bit of a practical joker, and while he does not do “proper” pranks today, he still enjoys little jokes like “misplacing” someone’s schoolbag on the other side of the room.

He also enjoys zombie fiction; while at the same time admitting it has become something of a cliché, a large number of the video games he plays include zombies and several of the books on his shelf revolve around zombies. He even briefly tried his hand at a zombie RP, but nowadays only brings it up when he wants to show his friends the low quality of writing the site’s users (including, at the time, Chuck) possessed. In addition to zombie games, he is also a fairly devoted gamer, playing games on a 3DS, his sister’s Wii, his Xbox 360 and his computer. He is a particularly big fan of Team Fortress 2 and most first-party Nintendo titles, like Mario and Zelda.

By far his most prominent interests, and the ones that Chuck wants to pursue careers in when older, are politics and history. He is already looking to study the former at university, and plans to volunteer for a couple of Congressional campaigns in the state. His interest in history was sparked simply because he found he enjoyed learning about it at school. His interest in politics was created mainly because of the influence of his maternal uncle, Jeff Richards, who used to read newspapers and watch news channels with Chuck when he was younger. Despite his family’s mostly-conservative political beliefs, Chuck is a registered Democrat, a self-described “moderate progressive” (the main exception being his strong pro-life and pro-gun views and conservative-leaning views on foreign policy), and a semi-active unknown political blogger.

His interest in politics can sometimes alienate others. While he tries to avoid bringing it up, he can sometimes bore people with politics-related tangents and can sometimes get preachy when someone disagrees with him. In addition, politics is the one area where Chuck can have something of an ego; he knows he’s knowledgeable on politics, and he makes no attempt to hide or downplay his “expertise”.

Due to his strong interests in those areas, Chuck does well on any subject related to history or politics; he is regarded as one of the best in the school in those areas. Accordingly, he also enjoys those kinds of subjects the most. Aside from that, his academic performance is average, and the only subject he actually struggled with was maths. He can also speak French fairly well, having done well in the subject while he was taking it and benefiting from the influence of a few French-speaking relatives.

In addition, Chuck is also a member of the school's debating club, where he is seen as a competent (yet not incredible) debater and speaker, and a writer for the school's newspaper. Chuck's interest in school newspapers started when he was 11, when he and a friend decided to start a school newspaper. Due to their age and inexperience, it had terrible articles, a nonexistent update schedule, abysmal management and no staff or resources whatsoever except for use of the school printer, scanner and some pens and pencils. Despite the relatively rapid failure of that project, Chuck eagerly joined the school newspaper the first opportunity he got upon arriving in Aurora High. While his initial enthusiasm has waned somewhat, Chuck still uses the newspaper as a platform to write reviews of games and books and write a current affairs column.

Advantages: Chuck gets on well with others; he should be able to form alliances or friendships, and maintain those relationships, with relative ease. He has also gained some information on how to respond to crises and emergencies from his parents, particularly his police officer father.

Disadvantages: Chuck’s small size, combined with his trusting personality, means he is weaker and less intimidating than the average male; people may see him as an easy target. While not completely useless without his glasses, if they get lost or damaged he will be at a disadvantage. In addition, some may dislike him because of his boasting about his political knowledge, or his sense of humour.

Designated Number: Male student No. 022

Designated Weapon: Dynamite sticks x 6

Conclusion: ... Well, if past experience is anything to judge by, there goes any sort of religious structure. - Dennis Lourvey

'The above biography is as written by General Goose. No edits or alterations to the author's original work have been made.'

Evaluations
Handled by: General Goose, Slayer

Kills: None

Killed By: Miles Strickland

Collected Weapons: Dynamite sticks x 6 (designated weapon)

Allies: Miles Strickland, Kat Tolstoff

Enemies:

Mid-game Evaluation:

Post-Game Evaluation:

Memorable Quotes:

Threads
Below is a list of threads that contain Chuck, in chronological order.

The Past:
 * Spooky Little Ghosties

Pre-Game:
 * True Friends are Jerks
 * The Friendliest Kidnapping Ever

V5:
 * Rebel Diamonds

Your Thoughts
''Whether you were a fellow handler in SOTF or just an avid reader of the site, we'd like to know what you thought about Chuck Soileau. What did you like, or dislike, about the character? Let us know here!''
 * I have to admit I'm not at all happy with how things panned out for Chuck, given how he was in pregame and what I was trying to live up to. I wanted to do well by how Gianni wrote him, but between an extremely slow thread and rolls, and being unable to catch any save, there wasn't anything I could do. Feels like a waste. Ekyl (talk) 09:38, July 17, 2013 (UTC)